Zac Bastide Niel Bordeaux - MVRDV

Zac Bastide Niel Bordeaux – MVRDV / Danny Andrés Osorio Gaviria

Source: © MVRDV, 2010 1

MVRDV Zac Bastide Niel Bordeaux

Danny Andrés Osorio Gaviria Theory and Practice of Urbanism since 1945 [H02L4a]

Master of Human Settlements KU Leuven 2015

Zac Bastide Niel Bordeaux – MVRDV / Danny Andrés Osorio Gaviria

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Abstract In the contemporary world different kind of social, cultural, political and economic phenomena affects the way we conceive the city, changing the methods of intervention in the physical urban space.

Today one of the most important aspects in the urban project is the way how these interventions can regenerate abandoned and disused spaces in the cities.

As an example of this process, the urban project for Zac Bastide Niel, designed for the Dutch agency MVRDV, can show us how develop a high density and zero energy neighborhood for strengthen the city center of Bordeaux, as one of the major sites for the development of the city and its suburbs, offering a new urban scenario for the demands of the contemporary society.

Introduction Nowadays architecture and urbanism, as the culture itself, are experiencing a period of deep changes. We are living in times of social changes that inherently affect how we understand the city and consequently produce a different way of how architects and urban planners are facing the challenge of design our cities based in the particular needs of the contemporary culture.

The theory and practice of urbanism, since the World War II ended in 1945, experienced deep changes due to the consequences of

this historical event. Before the war the European economy collapsed because a large part of the industrial infrastructure was destroyed, however after some years of economic decline Europe experienced a remarkable recovery, times of stability and high economic growth. This period of economic stability defined the time for the beginning of the post-war reconstruction and renovation of the cities, task, in this moment, driven by principles of modernist architecture and urban planning.

The theory and practice of the modernist urbanism established a radical transformation of the city form and, in consequence, in the lifestyle of the people living in the cities.

Influenced by functionalist theories the main ideas of the modernist urbanism was based in the radical separation of the urban activities (zoning), the differentiation of land uses, the eradication of the traditional urban fabric and the use of super blocks supported by oversized motorway systems.

After these modernist theories emerge the postmodern ideas about the city as a way to react against the modernist interpretation of the city and their rupture with the tradition, attempting to link a new city with the social and historical urban context.

However, the ideas of the modernist and postmodernist urban design paradigm are not enough to deal with the continuous changes and mutations of our contemporary culture. In the current post-industrial society the contemporary urban practice and research operate by project, as a way of integrate and

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juxtapose different patterns of urbanization and reorganize the urban space through mechanisms of reciprocity.

The contemporary urban project establishes as one of the most important fields of action the spaces left by the modernist city where huge monofunctional infrastructures have been abandoned and places where the city have been left without program. In this kind of scenarios is necessary and indispensable produce, metaphorically speaking, the precise chemical reaction. The urban project is a process where punctual actions can produce a large impact in a defined period of time, inscribing urban architecture in the existing city, replacing, transforming and establishing a dialectical process with the context.

The interventions in existing built environments have been understood for the contemporary urban project as local operations in a specific space in a close relation with the city. The modernist urbanism established the program, the architecture, as the main instrument of intervention, and the masterplan, which destroyed the identity of the cities in this period. On the other hand, the contemporary development projects are based in the interpretation of the site as a manifestation of the urban context linked to the morphological qualities of the existing urban fabric and improving new developments as a way to modernize our cities without the static and inflexible paradigm of the modernist movement.

A complex development plan starts from a complete reading of the context as a way

articulate the project with the existing urban figure, taking in account the traditional city as a guideline not as something to copy or repeat in a different way. This strategy is focus in preserve the identity of the urban context, nonetheless there are more actions to complement the first one, for example, define the speed of the streets and the relation with the cars with primacy of the pedestrians and bikes, always taking in consideration the continuity of the urban fabric and the link with the morphology of the existing city.

Another important approach in the urban project is, in contrast with the ideas of the modernist movement, the mix of scales and the mix of uses, the aim of this strategy is reactivate the urban life in the streets, the articulation with the public space and the continuous exchange with urban architecture.

Based on this kind of strategies the mission of the contemporary urban project, if I may say so, is intervene in the abandoned and unused postindustrial areas in the cities. The task of architects and urban planners is recycle and reuse these zones and provide them character through the restoration and renovation concentrated in punctual urban interventions and transforming them in new centralities suturing the fragments of the complex cities.

As a support of these actions is indispensable increasing the density of the areas of action and preserve a close relationship with the territory through the superposition of urbanistic interventions, conceiving the city as a form of culture in the contemporary society.

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Background The history of the Niel zone started with some general stores that turned into barracks in 1874.

The main building zone of barracks was built between 1876 and 1877; with the aim to enlarge de area of the barracks other plots were acquisitioned until 1922. The German Army occupied the area from 1940 to 1944.

After that the barracks were used as a house for Spanish Republicans refugees and they were in charge of building the submarine base. The barracks closed after the war.

Zac Bastide Niel Bordeaux by MVRDV In 2010 the Netherlands-based architecture and urban agency, MVRDV, presented the urban project for the post-industrial zone called Zac Bastide Niel as one of the most important urban interventions the city of Bordeaux in France.

The Urban Community of Bordeaux (CUB) was the sponsor of this project on the banks of the Garonne River. The proposal is the renovation of 35 hectares of land close in the center of the city, reclaiming disused railway land, military wasteland, warehouses, former barracks, rail yards and rail embankments.

The new plan is based on a real mix of uses and occupations, density, sustainability, renovation of the existing buildings, human scale, architectural diversity, the development of new uses, new public space, new urban

facilities and new housing projects carefully introduced in the existing urban fabric of the city.

The new mix program for the area of Bastide Niel is composed by 3200 new dwellings, 25000 m2 available retail, 2500 m2 of new offices, 15000 m2 crafts, 58000 m2 of public facilities, new economic and commercial uses, a new university building, new municipal buildings, new cultural buildings, a new community center, new schools, new day care centers, new sport facilities, etc.

The plan is based on the concept of "inner city", a contemporary reinterpretation of the ancient city supported by existing historic infrastructures as the rail tracks, platforms, railways and the disposition of the old barracks. These historic infrastructures will be maintained, preserving the memory of the place, and maximum densified, MVRDV in the practice always have demonstrated a trend to large densification processes.

After define the history as starting point for the new development, a network of street was established to preserve the continuity of the urban fabric connected with the existing grid.

In fact, the mobility network is composed by 6 to 10 meter narrow streets with the same section of the road designated to cars (speed limit: 20 kilometers / hour), a public transport grid, bikes and pedestrians. Most of the streets are one-way with a special lane for the tramway, promoting soft transport systems and providing public transport to the future inhabitants of the 144 city blocks.

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For these reasons the new residents of the new Bastide Niel will live in a new urban environment in many aspects equivalent to a historic center in a traditional European city.

Another important point in a contemporary urban project is the parking. In this case there is no parking in the public space, the areas designated for parking will be above ground level and inside the 144 city blocks there are small parks complemented with pocket gardens and in some cases small squares that creates a complex green network connected to the large scale green structure, the riverside Parc Aux Angéliques, designed by the French landscape architect Michel Desvignes.

The 144 city blocks of the project will be commissioned to 144 different architecture offices with the objective of provide contemporary aesthetics, architectural

diversity and variety according to the urban project in the current society.

The sustainable aspect of the plan is an ambition of “zero energy” for the neighborhood. The idea is based in different interventions. In first place the creation of a geothermal installation to provide heat from 1 kilometer depth to the entire project in the surface. In second place there is a solar energy proposal to create a new photovoltaic plant that will use the roof and south facades of the buildings for the location of solar panels used to produce electricity for the supplying and needs of the project. As another roof strategy all the building blocks are designed to receive sun light and natural ventilation through the two facades restricting the building volumes to 14 meters depth. These kind of interventions, especially the variation of the roofs in the entire project, is considered

Source: © MVRDV, 2010 Zac Bastide Niel Bordeaux – MVRDV / Danny Andrés Osorio Gaviria

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as the basis of the emergence of a new “European city roofscape”.

The development of the urban project Zac Bastide Niel started in 2014 with the first pilot small scale projects: the cultural building, a mix use city block, a restaurant and small gardens as part of the public space system.

The unused and abandoned rail embankments will be used for a while as orchard to grow trees and after the beginning of the project move them to the new green spaces in the entire project. The development of the plan for Bastide Niel is divided into 6 phases, the first phase of the project started in 2014 and the implementation of the other phases of the plan will continue for a period of 12 years. Zac Bastide Niel is part of the Bordeaux 2030, one of the largest urban projects for a major development plan for the city of Bordeaux between 2015 and 2030.

Reflections According to Manuel de Solá-Morales in the text: Public spaces / Collective spaces, the relationship between the private and public is essential in an urban project. In Zac Bastide Niel there is a coherent connection between the private and public sphere, housing is the power of the open space and support economic activities, although there is not a 100 per cent traffic free zones, the section of each road is designed for a predominance of pedestrians, bikes and public transport systems over the car. The project envisioned the “city as a form of architecture” placed Zac Bastide Niel Bordeaux – MVRDV / Danny Andrés Osorio Gaviria

Source: © MVRDV, 2010

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literally on the historical heritage of the existing site.

The urban project have significant implications for a city in long term, this project search to create a new image for the city of Bordeaux with the conversion of areas that were unused as a way to link together fragmented and residual areas in the existing fabric, the method to achieve this plan is use the public space as a main structure of the project.

As I mentioned before, the plan is based on a contemporary reinterpretation of the ancient city, in the same way that Solá-Morales mentioned in is text as a “new medieval character of the contemporary territory”.

Patrik Schumacher and Christian Rogner, in the essay: After Ford, have some interesting arguments especially about the site. In this case, Zac Bastide Niel have a complex strategy for the reinhabitation process of the historic side of the city currently unused due to the monotony and lack of diversity as one of the main failures of the modernist urbanism.

The concept of zoning produced this industrial zones in the cities nowadays abandoned and unused, the areas affected for this kind of phenomena are the perfect scenario for the performance of the contemporary urbanism, creating hybrid conglomerates in constant mutability and indeterminacy, a different way to face the challenges of the post-fordist urbanization processes.

Source: © MVRDV, 2010 Zac Bastide Niel Bordeaux – MVRDV / Danny Andrés Osorio Gaviria

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Similar arguments about the contemporary urban project we can find in text: The role of the urban project in the new urban culture, where Joan Busquets mention the topic of the post-fordist paradigm, the issue of the abandoned industry, the pre-existing situation and the changes in the patterns of urbanization as phenomena to confront in the contemporary cities.

“Man as a social being is always creating new forms of urbanity, and it is up to us to interpret them and to create processes and urban forms that match these new conditions.”

Busquets defines a series of urban strategies to challenge this kind of interventions and we can identify in the urban project of Zac Bastide Niel some of them.

In first place strategies that work with the context. The project in Bastide Niel takes in account the existing urban morphology, the scale and the urban form. Besides starting from not eradicate all the reminders of the past, the project is based in the reinterpretation of the morphology of abandoned and disused spaces as the railway land, military wasteland, warehouses, former barracks, rail yards and rail embankments.

This approach, we can say, is in the same line of highlight the city of the past as a fundamental constituent of the present, preserving historic elements of the city as a way to provide the place with identity, having the past as a source of information, reinforcing and clarifying the urban morphology of the existing urban fabric.

Zac Bastide Niel Bordeaux – MVRDV / Danny Andrés Osorio Gaviria

Source: © MVRDV, 2010

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In second place, the fundamental basis of the future success of an urban intervention is promoting the mix of uses as a guarantee of urban quality. As a complement of this action the Bastide Niel search the densification as a main process of improve the urban development of the zone and support this dense proposal with a soft infrastructure and, as I mentioned before, a tramway, as a soft public transport alternative.

From my point of view is interesting how MVRDV combines the uses in the plan for the renovation of the Bastide Niel, however, I think there is a good way to establish an order and hierarchy in the use of the land but something seems to be missing. As a Dutch agency the regulations and systems are particularly well organized, nevertheless it seems a little bit rigid and inflexible. Another important point that it is good to writing about is the plan for a future growth of the zone. Despite one of the main design strategies of the project is the densification process of the area the question always will be: is it enough?, obviously this is a general question for the contemporary architecture and urbanism as a way to improve future urban developments and, if it is possible, find the optimal scale in a densification process.

Another important issue about the mix of uses in an urban development is how far can go.

For example a good question, I want to leave in the air, is what is the difference between the zoning of the modernist urbanism and a contemporary plan for land uses?, in the specific case of Bastide Niel, can we consider

the project as a kind of “vertically zoning”?, the challenge for new projects in the contemporary society is how include the chaos as a catalyst of the spontaneity of the human being. When you have a only a site you have a site, when something happens in a site you have a human being and therefore you have a place, this is where the architecture and urbanism appeared.

On the other hand the soft transport system presents a series of interesting discussion about the plan. In first place the question is that the tramway is enough as an exclusive public transport system?, Zac Bastide Niel is not as large as a masterplan in the modernist period, for example the Plan Voisin for Paris

by Le Corbusier, nevertheless is not a small scale project. If the proposed public transport system is not enough to the zone then there will be another problem, the car traffic in the area will rise and with a reduced parking capacity there will be a huge problem to solve.

The mobility is an inherent issue to the urban life and how architects and urban planners deal with it is a relevant point, especially in the case of Zac Bastide Niel.

In third place, and in my opinion, as a most complete and fundamental thesis of the proposal of the urban project in Bastide Niel, is the implement of the strategies to restructure the existing city, in words of Joan Busquets: “The evolution of cities produces changes in systems of communication and production, leaving empty spaces. These offer existing opportunities for ambitious strategies of re-

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uses. As far as possible, they should be addressed as general strategies rather than specific operations. This was the case in Barcelona and the strategy to promote “new centralities” in its urban area. Thirteen areas of wasteland, occupied by obsolete industry or unused infrastructure, provided an opportunity to introduce central activities into areas that would otherwise remained peripheral in character. Each intervention had a specific brief, and economic activity was joined by services, facilities and parks that could benefit the existing residential sectors. One area that stands out for its impact was the coastal front which began with the Olympic Village in 1992.”

Although the case in Barcelona mentioned by Busquets was a successful application of this kind of strategies in an urban project it is not a guarantee for the success of other projects.

Always there are a large amount of parameters, details, limitations, particularities and peculiarities which makes different each intervention in a urban context, for that reason it is fundamental the identity and the legacy of each site at the moment to design a urban project. These particularities are the most important factors in the moment of conceive a kind of urban plan like Zac Bastide Niel.

Last but not least, the strategies for a sustainable city in a mid-term are developed in the Bastide Niel project through the “zero energy” proposals: the geothermal installations, the solar energy system with the photovoltaic plant and the solar panels and natural ventilation and lighting. As a proposal

for the technical development of the energy, the heat and the passive bioclimatic systems is a well thought, I just have a query about the water for an integral strategy about sustainable development in the Zac Bastide.

However, I have to confess my incredulity in this aspect, I think these kinds of elements are part of a different scope, certainly important in the assembly of the urban project as a multidisciplinary practice but I don’t believe in the sustainable strategies as a deterministic factors of the form and aesthetic of the urban project, as it is described in the plan for the Bastide Niel.

Last but not least it is logical a take in consideration the applicability of the reinterpretation of the ancient city and the extension of this approach. I think after the evaluation of the current urban projects we can see how this strategy is working and how is facing the contemporary phenomena. There are a huge number of new factors in the contemporary society, for example mass media, social networks, among others, that are playing an important and decisive role in how the urban space is operating and in how the contemporary society conceives the city.

In conclusion, today the urban project should find a large variety of spheres of intervention, however the most interesting are the singleuse sites (legacy of the zoning of the modernist urbanism), this kind of places have the qualities, the potential and the possibilities to regenerate and restructure the existing city resulting in a different way to understand the urban culture in our contemporary society.

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Source: © MVRDV, 2010

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Actuarchi, “MVRDV transforme la ZAC Bastide Neil à Bordeaux en un éco-quartier”, <http://www.actuarchi.com/2012/01/mvrdv-zac-bastide-neilbordeaux/> January 02, 2015.

Archdaily, “Master Plan for Bastide Niel / MVRDV”, <http://www.archdaily.com/195848/master-plan-for-bastide-niel-mvrdv/> January 02, 2015.

Bordeaux 2030, “Batide Niel”, <http://www.bordeaux2030.fr/bordeaux-demain/niel> January 02, 2015.

Busquets, Joan, “The role of the urban project in the new urban culture”, in de Architect, 2011 (11), p.p. 78-91.

De Solá-Morales, Manuel, Periphery As a Project. In A Matter of Things, Rotterdam: Nai Publisers, 2008.

De Solá-Morales, Manuel, Public Spaces / Collective Spaces. In A Matter of Things, Rotterdam: Nai Publisers, 2008.

De Solá-Morales, Manuel, Territories without a Model. In A Matter of Things, Rotterdam: Nai Publisers, 2008.

L’Association des professionnels de l’urbanisme en Aquitaine et Poitou-Charentes(APUA), “Projet Bastide Niel – MVRDV”, <http://apua.urbanistes.fr/wp-content/uploads/projet-bastide-Niel-MVRDV.pdf> January 02, 2015.

MVRDV, “Bastide-Niel”, <http://www.mvrdv.nl/en/projects/Zac_Bastide_Niel/> January 02, 2015.

Patrik Schumacher & Christian Rogner, “After Ford”, in Stalking Detroit, Barcelona: Actar, 2001.

Rutger Huiberts Architecture and Urbanism, “ZAC Bastide Niel Bordeaux [RF]”, <http://rutgerhuiberts.nl/?p=797> January 02, 2015.

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